


Do I have the strength to force this moment to its crisis?

by TheSoundOfHerWings



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, No real story line, Read it anyway, Richard theorising about what he would like in a partner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:06:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoundOfHerWings/pseuds/TheSoundOfHerWings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I have always been the caretaker, the giver, and I enjoy it, I do. But I can’t deny that there is part of me that wants to be the given to, and the cared for. I may not ever get it; in fact, I probably won’t, but dreams have never hurt anyone more than the harsh truth of reality has."</p><p>This is basically the thought process of Richard Brook. With a hint of Severin at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do I have the strength to force this moment to its crisis?

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to Muse's Exogenesis Part 3: Redemption while reading.
> 
> Title borrowed from T.S. Eliot's _Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock._

Do I?

Have the strength, I mean.

It is so easy at night, as the blankets curve around my body, to pretend that they are more than that. More than cloth and fabric. More than inanimate, lifeless objects. That they are fingers whispering gently along my skin. Jimmy would laugh at me for it, I know that he would. He prefers things differently. I’ve heard it firsthand. His guttural cries weave an intricate web within the thin walls separating our rooms and repel my hands away from the ache of wanting to touch. The marks on his chest are like wounds opened repeatedly, his open torso like a welcome sign to the pain he thrives in. He would see me as weak if he knew that it makes my stomach roll to think about it.

  

Sometimes when I see Sebastian, I think about how he must look during those moments: eyes glinting ferally, the air pulling beads of sweat from his blood. It’s natural to think about those things, isn’t it? The lines of his body are more than appealing, but the wild gleam in his eyes reaches out to constrict around my throat and I feel so small next to him. I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. He towers over me, yes, but when I imagine different hands roaming my skin, I don’t feel small. I feel so incredibly large.

I feel important. So often Jimmy is the one that’s important. I know that he deserves status as the “better twin” because he’s the clinical genius, the one that holds lives at the tips of his fingers and can discard them, however immorally, with only a small tremour. He is the one that can make a man jump to death with just a flick of his eyes. He is the nexus of the power. And I don’t harbour resentment against him. I love him more than he would ever let me express. But it gets hard, feeling so small. I can’t describe it.

It’s like… It’s like being mute. You can’t talk. Or speak. But your mouth wants to move and you want to scream and if you don’t you _die_. If you don’t make a noise, make someone look at you, remind them that you have a voice, you’ll wither away into nothing. Jimmy’s always told me that I’m dramatic, but that’s what it feels like. I open my mouth but nothing comes out and that lack of substance has the potential to make a man feel like dust.

Many people would say that it’s wrong to feel like this, but how can it be? I don’t think Jimmy’s wrong for liking Sebastian the way he does, of course not. But it’s not wrong to want to feel important, is it? It’s not wrong to want soft hands running down my legs and curling around the little hairs. I can’t make myself believe it’s wrong to need to be touched instead of devoured in one bite and thrust down into the throat of consummation. I am not half of a whole, not even to Jimmy. I am a whole person, I am. I don’t need to be validated, saved, or fixed, I just want to feel big.

Important. Loved. I want the feeling of standing at the ocean with the waves rushing toward me - and only me. I want to feel them lapping at my feet and curling up through the spaces between my toes. I want the feeling of something so big, so importantly big wanting to sink into my pores, osmose through my skin and hug me. I want that feeling when someone touches me.

When they stroke through my hair, I want them to love it, too. Them. Him. It will most likely be a him. Because hims are gorgeous. Taller, preferably, but Jimmy’s just as gorgeous as the rest of them, and we’re the same. So maybe height doesn’t matter. I like the feeling of being tucked in and held against something pure and solid, but I don’t want to be consumed. I want to be held as if I am precious, not just the worshiper of the treasured. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really craved.

I have always been the caretaker, the giver, and I enjoy it, I do. But I can’t deny that there is part of me that wants to be the given to, and the cared for. I may not ever get it; in fact, I probably won’t, but dreams have never hurt anyone more than the harsh truth of reality has. They make the hard edges of life easier to bear, knowing that inside your mind there is an endless capacity to pretend that things are better than they are. No matter the drone of normal life or the everyday monotony that has its eroding capabilities, when I close my eyes to the whirring wind, he’s there and he’s all around me, tucking me in against a chest that breathes in my heartbeat and reveres it.

He’s there with calloused hands stroking my hair and whispering soft words. Gentle words. Jimmy would laugh, I know he would, but don’t we all crave this? Don’t we all crave someone that looks at us as if nothing else matters? We are such a lonely race - depraved and mangled animals. We’re all looking for ethereal belonging in the same eyes of the ones that burn with ferocity; the same ones that would no sooner rip our windpipes from our throats. Tell me that you don’t wish for someone to pick you up off of your bathroom floor and wipe the metaphorical or literal blood from the tiles simply to save you the work of kneeling any lower than your spirit has already become. Tell me that you don’t wish for someone to hold you on the bent surface of their back when you get tired. We are such a lonely race comprised of empty eyes that are constantly searching for something to fill in the black voids.

He’s there, in my mind, and our eyes fill each other.

Perhaps I want to feel big because I am so tired of feeling empty.The cavity of my heart is filled with the things I love - Jimmy, even Sebastian to an extent, but the rest of my body is hollow in the places where I am not loved. I am such a lonely shell.

Have you ever thought about the word ‘lonely’? The vowels of the word are separated from each other. Letter structures like walls and windows push them apart, just within sighing distance of each other. It is a word constructed of empty letters and frail poles to hold it up throughout the billions of years that we’ve existed. And still it is so strong. It grips us in the throes of agony and leaves us heaving on the carpeted floor of a room that looks like it should belong to a prince. Tell me that you are the prince of your own body, and tell me that you aren’t the loneliest being amongst the stars. Is it wrong to want to hang my loneliness on the coat rack of another’s house? Is it wrong to want my poignant echoes to be dusted off by other hands and warmed by the furnaces of different fireplaces? I still don’t think so.

Perhaps we each find connection differently. Maybe Jimmy finds his with the pain of Sebastian’s short and torn nails as they scratch the length of his pale chest. It snaps him back to reality each time he starts to drift away. He might give his loneliness in the form of seeming depravity to a man who has no room to grasp it. The corroded layers of their souls cannot hold each other. They simply pass the other back and forth in a wordless ritual. _You are not alone in your monstrosity_. Perhaps they hold each other as long as they can before the blackness starts to swim through their eyes and they need to pain to push them back into the realm of the living. That’s not wrong either.

We give our warm breath both so easily and so sparingly - willing to bestow it onto a stranger in a dark lit place for temporary release, but not to the ones who catch our shoulders before we hit the ground. To the stranger, we exhale onto the back of their necks and we try not to feel so alone. But we are always alone, always in the dark and always strangers. And we weave our lungs into lies that are so beautiful and yet so tragic to the friends that need to be caught. We are so depraved.

But I think the most honest depravity is in the congealed pair. The sobbing form as he turns the light out before shedding his clothes; the strong voice flicking them back on and kissing down his counterpart’s stomach and around everything the other fears most. Are we alone, then? Laying on the carpet or sheets of soiled expectations only to find that we are loved even in our most self-hated places?

Tell me that you don’t turn off the light before climbing into bed. Tell me you wouldn’t like someone to turn them back on even just to see your face as they smile at you. I do. I do. Oh, God, I do.

Holding the steaming coffee between my small fingers, the reflection of the dark liquid couldn’t disguise the emptiness left in the pupils of my hollowed eyes. The embrace of the beverage couldn’t warm my stomach when it contracts with fear every time someone new stands before me. Will find safety or pain with them? You’ll find those eyes everywhere. It’s become almost easy to discern between the ones that want to destroy for pain or for pleasure.

I look up and catch the dark eyes of a hunched over military man. They seem to smirk at me through the fog of the kitchen that separates us. I don’t have to wonder about why he’s here. Only one type of business brings men like him into the confines of the flat I share with my brother, but he looks much more defeated than I have seen his replica look - even during Sebastian’s darkest moments. The eyes glint at me, almost kindly. He has a look that I have seen before. In certain people, the haunting look of being alone is easily discernible. I offer him a smile, and he gives it back gently, his eyes softening with curiosity, but I still can’t tell whether they would like to tear me apart to watch me bleed or to find out if I have a coat rack open for his loneliness to hang. But I do. I do. Oh, God, I do.


End file.
